Health Blog

Category Archives: Health

Isaiah Austin does have some skinny legs. But that’s how he IS; skinny (in my book) shouldn’t be a goal.Tom Fox: Staff Photo

I get tons of emails. Too many. More specifically, too many that mention celebrity trainers or National Something Week or a medication that the media person has somehow been able to link, however vaguely, to a news story.

And too many, most of all, with the words SKINNY or BIKINI BODY in the subject line. That also holds true for “skinny jeans,” “skinny” preceding any recipe name and, as tasty as these treats are, Skinny Cow. Who wants to hang out with a skinny cow?

Just what IS the allure of “skinny”? That was what leaped out at me when I read the Why Girls Love the Dad Bod blog post that included this:

“We love people saying ‘they look cute together,’ writes author Mackenzie Pearson. “But we still like being the center of attention. We want to look skinny and the bigger the guy, the smaller we feel and the better we look next to you in a picture.”

1. The word “skinny” conjures up Pippi Longstocking. Not that there’s anything wrong with Pippi. And maybe I’m picturing her incorrectly, but assuming I’m not — why would you want to look like a knock-kneed, all-elbows girl with legs like uncooked spaghetti?

2. Skinny sounds synonymous with sickly. That, or with a stray cat that hasn’t eaten in days. So yeah, sickly.

3. Skinny doesn’t equal attractive. What IS it with this smaller-is-better fetish? Granted, I am soooo not about the super sizing, but isn’t there a happy medium in there somewhere?

4. Skinny shouldn’t be a goal. Good health? Sure. Muscle tone? Why not. But skinny?! We all have different bodies. They’re ours; they’re a gift. So why starve our own and chastise it and compare it to someone else’s — especially if that someone looks malnourished and whose head, therefore, is way out of proportion to the rest if her body? (I say “she” because chances are, this is a girl thing)

OK, there you have it, my two-cents’ worth. Oh, and I didn’t even get to “bikini body” — which, come to think of it, I don’t even know what that MEANS.

I’m a bike wimp, but that doesn’t stop me from realizing what glorious weather for bike riding we’ve been having. Fingers crossed that June 13 skies are as blue and the air as fresh as today. But even if there are clouds and humidity runs high, the 24th annual Collin Classic Bike Rallysounds like oodles of fun and fitness for just about everyone who loves a two-wheeler.

The event starts at 8 a.m. at McKinney North High School; from there, you can pick a route anywhere from 21 to 64 miles long. The rally (not a race) is all about safety, so be sure to wear your helmet (or you can’t ride!) and pay attention to each other. If you get a flat tire or just can’t pedal one more revolution, well, by golly, someone will be there to help you out.

What makes this rally even more special than the fun element is that it benefits City House. Since 1988, the nonprofit has helped abused and homeless youth.

Want one more reason to support this rally? For $25, you can register to win a (are you sitting down?) Giantroad bikes worth $10,300 for the men’s and $8,750 for the women. You don’t have to be part of the rally to put your $25 — or five for $100 — in the hat. The more times you enter, the more City House receives. Oh yeah, and the better your chances.

Even if you don’t read another word of this blog post, at least click hereto see the nifty graphic produced by the online version of theWall Street Journal. Hover your cursor over a state and — voila! — you can learn where it ranks fitness-wise overall, plus as far as walking, running and cycling go.

The figures were compiled by Map My Fitness, the fitness app with 22 million users. It’s owned by Under Armour, whose data scientists did what their job title suggests and compiled the data. There are a few caveats here; for instance, only users of Map My Fitness (as well as its app siblings, MapMyRun and MapMyRide were part of this, as well as MapMyHike.

Plus, there may be some times these users didn’t use the app. Also, if you’re from Ohio and run in Texas, Texas gets the credit for that run. Which of course has nothing to do with the fact that Texas ranks No. 4 as far as number of minutes run per week (35.6, which doesn’t sound like much, but hey, maybe they were all done in interval training!)

Anyway, pretty cool. Hover your cursor on Texas…then wherever you were born…then wherever you went to college…then wherever your best friend lives…and before you know it, your boss will be tapping you on the shoulder and giving you a quizzical look.

How to decide which fitness tracker is right for you. AP photo/Bebeto Matthews

Had a note awhile back from the folks at Valencell, a company that develops biometric sensor technology. To be honest, I hadn’t heard of it until that email, but there no doubt are tons of other companies I’ve never heard of either!

Anyway, I asked if Valencell’s president and co-founder, Steven LeBoeuf (who has a doctorate degree in electrical engineering) could offer a few tips of what to look for in a fitness tracker. He was happy to comply. So if you’re NOT one of the millions and millions who own one — or you are and wonder whether you’ve done enough homework — read on:

Think beyond the wrist. It’s not as accurate a place for continuous heart-rate monitoring during exercise, he says, “because the wrist generates unwieldy fake readings due to motion artifacts such as skin motion and footsteps.” The ear, he says, is the best place. Wow! That’s news to me.

Think validation. Has the product been through independent validation for accuracy against gold-standard benchmarks?

What does that mean? That you should check the manufacturer’s website to see if the product has been tested “against gold-standard benchmarks, with interval testing on a treadmill, both indoors and outdoors,” he says. Plus, the testing should have been done on a decent number of people who are various ages, races and genders.

Match your wearable to your need. Sounds obvious, but not everyone buys a tracker for the same reasons. Maybe your goal is to get better at your current workout regimen or merely to walk those magical 10,000 steps a day.

Will it accurately measure calories burned? If you want to track calories burned during exercises that don’t involve footsteps such as those you’d do in a gym, you’ll need an accurate heart rate monitor or another type of continuous biometric monitor to capture your body’s exertion where pedometers cannot.

No, those two aren’t Cindy and me…but I bet they’re glad they showed up to their class, too. Photo: Ben Torres

I left work Tuesday with what I thought would be plenty o’time to make it to yoga — before it started, even! Why oh why do I keep forgetting that I drive up Central during rush hour? And that there’s no telling whose car will collide into whose, or just how many people will leave downtown at exactly the same moment with exactly the same transportation route.

By the time I reached my exit, it was eight minutes till six. Class starts at 6:15. If I didn’t stop to get gas, I probably wouldn’t have enough gas to get home, no less drive an additional mile and a half. Yes, I should walk; I know that. But then I really wouldn’t have made it even close to on-time.

I raced in the house, had a spoonful of peanut butter, threw on one of my especially adorable outfits — OK, it wasn’t cute in the slightest — told the dog I’d feed her when I returned, and dashed out.

When I opened the door to the studio at 6:16, class hadn’t started. There was one person on a mat — my pal, one of the Cindys — plus the instructor Chrissy.

“Oh, is it time already?” Chrissy asked. “We were just chatting.”

I love all my yoga classes, but some in particular stand out. This was one. It was just Cindy and me, with patient, fun, knowledgeable Chrissy leading us. We did half-moon poseagainst the wall (OK, maybe not looking exactly like the photo, but I speak only for myself. Cindy probably did, but I was too focused to peek.)

It was challenging and fun and tiring and exhilarating — kind of a microcosm of life, right there in those 60 minutes.

Which brings us around to the tip of the day: Just go. I almost didn’t…and don’t even want to think what I would have missed.

Every year in the United States, 3.5 million cases of basal and squamous-cell cancer are detected. In 2015, 73,000 cases of melanoma are expected to be diagnosed.

Many of these are preventable; others can be cured if found in the early stages. As summer approaches, now is an especially good time to have a thorough skin check. You can do so for (our favorite word) FREE on Saturday, May 16, from 8 a.m. till noon at these locations:

I don’t mind rain I really don’t. I kind of like it. I love lightning, too. And thunderstorms! Well, unless I have to drive in them. Or I’m on a mountain somewhere. Or if they keep me from doing my run, as they kind of did here and have been threatening to do for the last — oh, 40 days and nights or so.

We’ve had so many weather alerts that I keep my mattress in the bathtub and some Fritos in the closet furthest from any windows. Prep work is key, you betcha.

But we all gotta venture outside our tornado forts periodically. We need to check our houses and, as long as no ruby slipper-clad feet are jutting out from underneath, to venture forth. And if you have the sound track to “The Wizard of Oz” on your mind, well, make the most of it.

This is a bit healthier — and far more rare — than the traditional Dad Bod.Staff photo: Evans Caglage

Not sure if you’ve heard the term Dad Bod. Until a day or so ago, I of course had not, but then again, I am never on what you’d call the cutting edge of anything smacking of “hip” or “trending.”

The phrase has become of the roll-off-the-tongue variety ever since a 19-year-old college student named Mackenzie Pearson — that may be a bit redundant; with that name, of course she’s a 19-year-old college student — wrote a blog post called “Why Girls Love Dad Bods.”

At first glance, it’s kinda fun. Guys with Dad Bods, for instance, don’t obsess over what they eat and how often they work out, which is refreshing in a way:

“The dad bod says he doesn’t meal prep every Sunday night so if you want to go to Taco Tuesday or $4 pitcher Wednesday, he’d be totally down,” she writes. “He’s not scared of a cheat meal because he eats just about anything and everything.”

But read on, and it becomes (at least in my mind) somewhat disturbing:

“We love people saying ‘they look cute together,’ she writes. “But we still like being the center of attention. We want to look skinny and the bigger the guy, the smaller we feel and the better we look next to you in a picture.”

“We need fat for insulation,” says Melissa Gerdes, a family physician with Methodist Health System, “but when you have too much, it’s toxic.”

She elaborates: “Extra fat tissue makes poison in your body. Fat isn’t selective; it goes everywhere. If you have it under your skin, you have it in your heart, liver, kidneys — everywhere.”

The higher the body mass index, the higher the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, stress, high cholesterol. Men with a waist measuring more than 40 inches are also at increased risk. Plus, where the fat gathers matters, too, she says.

“If you tend to store weight around your middle section” — think beer bellies — “there’s an little increased risk for diabetes and heart disease than people who put extra weight around their hips.”

The biggest risk factor for these diseases? Age, Gerdes says.

“You can’t modify aging; you can’t modify genetics. So we direct people to modify what they theoretically can, like weight and waist circumference.”

The goal for men doesn’t need to be an Adonis body, nor a Brad Pitt one. Just keep your weight down, your muscles moving, your plates filled with fruits and vegetables, and your good sense intact. And maybe one day the typical Dad Bod will be one with waist circumference under 40, and a BMI closer to 25.

It’s all relative, this sweat business. You’re probably sweating like crazy during runs these days — much more than you did in winter, but only a fraction of the saturation summer will bring.

So why in tarnation would you be thinking about a marathon in October or November or December? Welll…..because — and pardon us for being the bearers of disturbing news — you’ll need to do your long runs in the summer to be ready for your marathon or half marathon toward the end of the year.

Truth to tell, I hadn’t thought about a marathon or even a half. I’m still kind of floating over my delightful Dallas Halfexperience last December. But then I received an email from Kerry Little at Luke’s Locker reminding me of a few things. Namely, that training season begins May 16, with an informational meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 12.

Yes, there’s that Dave Tarrant and me again on those stationary bikes here at the DMN gym — yes! there really IS one! — pedaling our little hearts out and making wise fitness chit-chat. OK, sorta wise.

In case you have not been following Dave’s Fitness Adventure and wonder of whence I speak, here’s a brief recap: Back in February, award-winning-about-to-turn-60 DMN personality and pal Dave Tarrant asked a question that made the Resident Fitness Nag all giddy:

“Will you,” he asked, “help me get in better shape by my birthday?”

I bought a whistle and tried to contain my excitement.

Flash forward two months. Dave’s lost 10 pounds. He is eating more vegetables and trying to cut down on portion size. He’s trying his darndest to ignore the aromatic brownies his slender wife and daughter bake. He’s exercising — not running as he’d like to do, but now cycling because of a torn meniscus.

Which brings us to our latest video. In it, Dave expresses concern that he won’t be able to lose weight because he’s not running. To which I say — to him and to you — oh, honey. There are sooooo many ways other than running to lose weight. Besides, running doesn’t guarantee weight loss; it’s how you do it (or any exercise) that counts.

Oh, and I also offer my very easy, very cheap, very low-cal, very(ish) healthy snack.